About 30% of residents of the Navajo Nation don’t have running water, and for many of those who do, their water is contaminated with uranium, arsenic or other toxins. As a group of Terrascopers learns, any discussion of water in the Navajo Nation leads to even more complex questions about tradition, change, language and spirituality.

First Aired: May 15, 2019

From artificial beaches maintained by natural ocean currents, to projects that make extra room for rivers flowing through cities, the Dutch know how to protect themselves from water. And each of these systems is also designed to meet other needs of the community it serves. We’re going to need to learn how to do that too.

Television sound from the 1953 flood courtesy of Sound and Vision, via Deltawerken Mediagallery.

In this personal exploration with radio-drama elements, Terrascopers try to understand how such an enormous city, with such a large population and so many unresolved issues, still manages to work so well. The answers lie both in the city’s ancient roots and in the ingenuity of its modern-day population.

First aired: Spring Semester, 2015 ·

In this music-rich piece, Terrascopers start at a South African school that once had no water–none for drinking, flushing, cleaning–and go on to learn that water security isn’t just about water: it’s about education, poverty, history and politics.